Tag: nurse practitioners

Failures in assessing the patient properly for pressure ulcers can result in adverse incident reports, complaints and even litigation. A look at medical malpractice lawyer web sites in both the UK and USA will reveal a number of attorneys offering specialism in pressure sore litigation and publishing compensation awards. In the NHS poor pressure area care is a key patient safety issue and positive steps have been taken to reduce the occurrence of these incidents which can cause result in severe harm and even death to patients. The incidents also cost healthcare services a lot of money in remedying the problems of neglect.

The problem of poor pressure area care can also be seen in other countries. Health is a fairly generic concept, whilst the context of health care may well be different, valuable patient safety lessons can be learned from looking at the health quality reports of other countries. Developing an informed comparative patient safety perspective to issues can save both time and money by not reinventing the wheel.

There is new guidance from Scotland, Healthcare improvement Scotland (HIS) on the prevention and management of pressures ulcers which will be of interest to nurses and all those concerned with health quality and governance. Read More

Fifty jurisdictions and the District of Columbia have laws pertaining to nurse practitioners’ scope of practice. In general, scope of practice laws regulate the autonomy nurse practitioners are given within their practice to treat patients. State laws fall into two main categories: limited practice and full practice. In limited practice states, the law limits autonomy for nurse practitioners by requiring them to collaborate with, or work under, the supervision of another health care provider. By contrast, full practice states allow nurse practitioners to practice independently.

In total, there are 29 limited practice states. In those states, collaboration, supervision, or a combination of the two are required in performing activities such as prescribing medication, ordering tests, performing examinations, and counseling or educating patients, among other activities.